Squeezing the space of thinking

When a state arrogates to itself the right to decide what its citizens should think, intellectual stagnation is not far behind. It does not arrive with a bang, but with a whimper — a slow, imperceptible closing of the mind.

There was a time when Pakistan argued with itself. And that, for all its sound and fury, was not a bad thing. It may, in fact, have been one of our greatest strengths.

The Pakistan of the 1960s, 70s and well into the 80s was hardly a liberal utopia. Let us not whitewash history. Newspapers were censored, newsrooms raided, political workers thrown behind bars. Poets were detained and press advice was a euphemism for the censor’s scissors. Every government and every praetorian dispensation had its sacred cows.

And yet, there was breathing space.

People argued — about socialism and capitalism, about religion and secularism, about democracy and dictatorship, about which way the wind should blow. University campuses hummed with passionate debate. Writers challenged the powers that be, journalists asked questions that made the high and mighty squirm, and poets turned verse into resistance. Filmmakers held a mirror up to society, warts and all.

It was messy, fractious, and often emotional.

But it was a conversation. A living, national conversation.

A society does not become intellectually alive because everyone sings from the same hymn sheet. It comes alive precisely because people are allowed to disagree — and to disagree vehemently.

Pakistan once had that quality in abundance.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz did not just write poetry; he gave political despair a vocabulary. Habib Jalib did not merely craft couplets; he spoke truth to power in the idiom of the street. Ahmed Faraz turned romance into rebellion.

They did not live in a perfect Pakistan. Far from it. But despite the heavy hand of the state, ideas found a way. Books were written, poems recited in crowded halls, newspapers provoked argument. The intellectual pulse, though feeble at times, had not stopped beating.

Today, something feels fundamentally different.

The question is no longer whether the state permits criticism. The deeper, more unsettling question is whether the citizen feels safe enough to even think aloud.

That is a different kettle of fish altogether.

In recent years, we have slipped into a culture where speech is hemmed in by a maze of legal, institutional and political minefields. The digital revolution promised a thousand flowers to bloom, but it has also brought new instruments of surveillance, regulation and criminal liability.

The government says it wants to curb fake news. Fair enough. No reasonable person would bat for deliberate disinformation.

But therein lies the rub. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

The danger begins when definitions of “false”, “fake”, “harmful” or “misleading” are so elastic that legitimate criticism can be thrown into the same net. When the law is written in broad strokes, it becomes a double-edged sword.

The amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act in 2025 set alarm bells ringing for precisely this reason. Human Rights Watch and other rights bodies warned that vague language around false information could have a chilling effect on free expression.

The point is not whether cyberspace should be regulated. Of course it should.

The real question is: how much power should the state have to act as the sole arbiter of truth?

That is a question we cannot simply sweep under the carpet.

Once a citizen begins to weigh every sentence against the prospect of a call-up notice, an inquiry, or an FIR, censorship no longer needs to come knocking at the door. Fear does the job for it.

That is how self-censorship takes root.

A journalist deletes a paragraph before filing. An editor quietly drops a story that is too hot to handle. A columnist chooses a safer, blander topic. A university professor steers clear of a controversial discussion. A young user on X types a sentence, reads it twice, and hits delete.

No one has physically stopped them. Yet something has entered their mind and taken up residence.

That is when freedom begins to shrink.

The creation of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) was sold as an exercise in restructuring and efficiency. But its actions, particularly inquiries involving journalists and online commentators during 2025 and 2026, have become part of a larger, troubling debate about where legitimate regulation ends and suppression of dissent begins. Press freedom organisations have repeatedly flagged the use of cybercrime provisions against journalists.

The details of each case may differ, but the central question remains the same: can journalism remain journalism if every uncomfortable story carries the threat of criminal consequences?

A journalist is neither a government’s spin doctor nor the opposition’s mouthpiece. His job is to ask questions. Sometimes he gets it wrong. Sometimes newspapers carry inaccurate reports. Sometimes anchors cross the line and social media users throw all caution to the wind.

There must be accountability. But accountability and intimidation are not two sides of the same coin. They are poles apart.

A mature state knows the difference. An insecure one does not.

And herein lies the larger tragedy. Pakistan is not merely facing a press freedom crisis. It is facing a crisis of intellectual diversity.

For decades, the Left provided one of the most vital counterweights in our political life. It was never a monolith — it housed communists, socialists, progressives, trade unionists and democratic nationalists who often disagreed among themselves. But they shared a common concern: social justice.

They spoke for the worker and the peasant. They talked about inequality, about education and health, about concentration of wealth and the excesses of privilege. They forced the establishment to confront awkward socio-economic questions. The early Pakistan Peoples Party, for all its later contradictions, occupied a crucial space within that progressive landscape.

Over time, however, the organised Left was pushed to the margins — through repression, through its own ideological splits, through the global collapse of socialism, and through the changing priorities of our polity.

The consequences have been far-reaching.

Today, the ideological spectrum is tilted heavily towards the centre-right, the right, and at times, the extreme right. Where is the robust Left? Where is the sustained argument about class? Where is the serious national debate on inequality? Where is the movement that speaks for labour as a matter of principle?

This is not a plea to resurrect a dead ideology. It is a plea to restore intellectual balance.

A society needs friction. The Right needs the Left. The conservative needs the liberal. The religious mind needs the secular mind. The government needs the opposition, and the institution needs the critic.

That friction is not a flaw in the system. It is the engine of political thought.

Take away that friction and politics becomes an echo chamber. Everyone hears the same thing, repeats the same thing, and eventually begins to believe that everyone agrees. They don’t. They have simply stopped speaking.

This is why our present predicament cannot be reduced to elections and governments alone. It is a crisis of national imagination.

There is much talk these days of a “hard state”. Pakistan certainly needs a strong state — strong institutions, effective policing, national security, competent administration, and the rule of law.

But let us be clear: a strong state is not the same as a state that cannot stomach criticism.

Strength is not measured by how many people you can put behind bars. It is measured by how confidently an institution can withstand scrutiny. A confident police force can answer questions. A confident government can face criticism. A confident judiciary can tolerate commentary. A confident state does not panic every time someone asks, “Why?”

That one word — why — is the bedrock of progress.

Why did this policy fail? Why is inflation breaking the back of the common man? Why does corruption continue unchecked? Why is a law so broadly worded? Why should a citizen be afraid to speak his mind?

These are not acts of rebellion. They are the raw material of democracy.

Pakistan appears to be buying into the notion that national unity requires intellectual uniformity. It does not. A nation can be united without thinking alike. In fact, genuine unity is only possible when people are free to disagree without being branded traitors.

A hard state may extract obedience. A democratic state must earn legitimacy. Obedience can be coerced. Legitimacy has to be won. The difference is not academic; it is existential.

You may achieve temporary silence through laws and arrests, but make no mistake — silence is not stability. More often than not, it is pressure building beneath the surface.

History has taught us this lesson time and again. Societies do not remain intellectually stagnant forever. Ideas find cracks to seep through. Questions return.

Pakistan needs to pause and take stock. Are our laws creating accountability or fear? Are our institutions protecting citizens or intimidating them? Are our regulations fighting misinformation or discouraging investigation? Are we producing informed citizens or obedient subjects?

A country cannot hope to be economically competitive while intellectually frightened. Innovation does not grow in an atmosphere of fear. Universities cannot produce world-class scholars if students learn that some questions are dangerous. Literature cannot breathe if every metaphor has to be weighed on a political scale.

We need laws against incitement, threats and harassment — narrowly drafted, transparently enforced, and subject to judicial oversight. The state must learn to tell the difference between criticism and conspiracy, between dissent and disinformation, between satire and sedition.

The real strength of Pakistan will not come from making everyone speak in one voice. It will come from letting a thousand voices compete — and trusting that truth will emerge from the clash of ideas.

Let the poet disagree. Let the journalist investigate. Let the teacher challenge. Let the student protest peacefully. Let the citizen ask why.

We do not need a population that merely obeys. We need citizens who understand. We do not need journalists who merely repeat. We need journalists who investigate.

And we certainly do not need a state that tells its people what to think. We need a state confident enough to say: think freely, argue passionately, question relentlessly, but stay within the bounds of the law.

That is not weakness. That, in the final analysis, is real strength.